Managua -- On June
11, 2008,
the axe of Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council (CSE)
came down on the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS[i])
and the old historic Conservative Party of Nicaragua (PCN), now a tiny shell of
its former self. The CSE unanimously decided to deregister both parties on the
grounds that they had failed to fulfill the requirements of the national
electoral law.

Towards the end of 1975 a movement of young radicals
organised in the Zimbabwe People’s Army (ZIPA) took charge of Zimbabwe’s
liberation war. ZIPA’s fusion of inclusive politics, transformational vision
and military aggression dealt crippling blows to the white supremacist regime
of Ian Smith. However, it’s success also paved the way for a faction of
conservative nationalists led by Robert Mugabe to wrest control of the
liberation movement for themselves.

June 17, 2008 -- The latest surge in the spot price of crude oil (to US$139 a barrel—87.4 cents a litre) dramatises the urgent need for society to wean itself off “black gold”. The longer we remain hooked the greater the devastation both to our environment and to the living standards of billions, especially the poorest peoples of the planet.

The challenge is huge. The response must combine defence against the threat to livelihoods from price rises with a plan to restructure economies and ways of living so that oil-intensive production and transport becomes a thing of the past.

June 16, 2008 -- Over the past decade, a new rise of mass struggles in Latin America
has sparked an encounter between revolutionists of that region and many
of those based in the imperialist countries. In many of these
struggles, as in Bolivia under the presidency of Evo Morales,
Indigenous peoples are in the lead.

Latin American revolutionists are enriching Marxism in the field of
theory as well as of action. This article offers some introductory
comments indicating ways in which their ideas are linking up with and
drawing attention to important but little-known aspects of Marxist
thought.

ADDIS ABABA, June 11, 2008 -- In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided and conquered. Turns in the class struggle might have surprised Walter Rodney, the political economist whose 1972 classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa provided detailed critiques of corporate looting.

In early June, the British-Dutch firm Shell Oil –- one of Rodney's targets -- was instructed to depart the Ogoniland region within the Niger Delta in southern Nigeria, where in 1995 Shell officials were responsible for the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. After decades of abuse, women protesters, local NGOs and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) gave Shell the shove. France's Total appears to be the next in line to go, in part because of additional pressure from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).

June 13, 2008 -- Fuel price hikes have always sparked widespread mass protests in Indonesia since the overthrow of the dictator Suharto in a popular uprising in 1998. However, the timing this year was special. The hike occurred near the time of the 10-year anniversary Suharto’s
fall on May 21 and the National Awakening Day on the 20th, which
commemorates the birth of Indonesia’s first nationalist organisation.
Three leftist fronts, each representing different tactics, took to the streets to reject the policy.

June 13, 2008 -- LatinRadical-- Coral Wynter
is back after coordinating the distinctive presence of the Australian Venezuela Solidarity Network's ``May Day'' brigade to Venezuela that included, appropriately, a large
contingent of Australian trade unionists. The previous Australian government of John Howard had the Australian embassy in Venezuela closed down when a Washington-inspired coup against President Hugo Chavez failed, but hopefully that
will change, if Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown (with the Australian brigadistas) returns after his own visit with the news that
President Hugo Chavez is not a ``dictator'', but a popularly elected
leader who has increased his electoral popularity regularly at each
electoral contest.

It’s been five years since residents of the poor community of Phiri
(Soweto) were first confronted with the practical consequences of the
City of Johannesburg’s corporatisation and commodification (read:
privatisation) of water delivery. That was when Phiri was chosen as the
first community in the Johannesburg Metro to ``benefit'' from the
implementation of its Operation Gcin’amanzi. What subsequently happened
has now been well documented many times over: the surreptitious and
forcible installation of pre-paid water meters under the pretext of
fixing ageing infrastructure; the victimisation and cutting-off of
supply to those who refused; and, sustained resistance pitting community
residents – organised through the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) and the
newly formed Coalition Against Water Privatisation (CAWP) -- against an ``unholy alliance'' of Johannesburg Water, the City of Johannesburg, state
prosecutors, the South African Police Services and private security firms.

By Farooq Tariq
Thousands of lawyers, political, trade unions and social movement
activists have made their way to Islamabad. They are participating in
the Long March called by the lawyers' movement. This is to push the
Pakistan Peoples Party government to restore the top judges without any
conditions.

June 11 report:
The Long March started from Karachi on June 9 and arrived in Sukhar at
early hours of June 10. Here they were joined by the participants from different groups from Baluchistan. They arrived at Multan on June 10
in the late hours, where the deposed chief justice Iftikhar Choudary had
arrived to welcome the rally. They left for
Lahore around 1pm.

On 29 May 2009, the delegates at the national convention of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), representing more than 3 million workers from every region of Canada and Quebec, voted overwhelmingly to demand that the government of Canada immediately end its participation in the illegal war in Afghanistan.

This CLC demand represents a significant consolidation of labour power. Several national unions, notably the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), had already adopted policies to oppose Canada's participation in the war in Afghanistan. However, some powerful unions whose members work in the rapidly expanding Canadian military and development industries could profit from continuing the war. The women and men of these unions made the difficult decision to stand in solidarity with the working people of Afghanistan rather than act on self-interest.

June 11, 2008 -- The Indian ruling class is striving to forge what it calls a ``strategic partnership’’ with the United States, and in this aim the major ruling-class political parties are united. The previous government -- a coalition termed the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) headed by the Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -- which was in power from 1999-2004, had in the wake of 9/11 strived to prove to the US rulers that India was a more stable and suitable ally on the subcontinent for the US ``war on terror’’ than Pakistan.

June 8, 2008 -- One of the most important developments in Cuban Marxism in recent years has been increased attention to the writings of Ernesto Che Guevara on the economics and politics of the transition to socialism.

A milestone in this process was the publication in 2006 by Ocean Press and Cuba's Centro de Estudios Che Guevara of Apuntes criticos a la economía política [Critical Notes on Political Economy], a collection of Che's writings from the years 1962 to 1965, many of them previously unpublished. The book includes a lengthy excerpt from a letter to Fidel Castro, entitled ``Some Thoughts on the Transition to Socialism''. In it, in extremely condensed comments, Che presented his views on economic development in the Soviet Union.[1]

In 1965, the Soviet economy stood at the end of a period of rapid growth that had brought improvements to the still very low living standards of working people. Soviet prestige had been enhanced by engineering successes in defence production and space exploration. Most Western observers then considered that it showed more dynamism than its US counterpart.

At that time, almost the entire Soviet productive economy was owned by the state. It was managed by a privileged bureaucracy that consolidated its control in the 1920s under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. Managers were rewarded on the basis of fulfilling production norms laid down from above; workers were commonly paid by the piece.

How
true it is that nothing lasts forever. Bolivia’s exploited classes, of
mainly indigenous origin, are now confronting more than five centuries of
exclusion. This territory’s original inhabitants were subjugated by the cross
and the sword during the colonial period, they were harassed and had their
lands taken from them under the Republic, and their culture was ignored during
the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1952. Now, as they finally take state
power by democratic means at the beginning of the 21st century, the dominant
minority accuses them of wanting to install the ``first racist, fascist state
in Latin America’’.

The current historical juncture is characterised by a profound crisis of the market economy, of liberal democracy and of the very foundations of the old republican colonial state, a monocultural, centralist and exclusionary state that has remained intact since the foundation of the Republic.

The first in a series of occasional Links Dossiers, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal is making available a selection of its key articles on the exciting development of Venezuela's United Socialist Party (PSUV). The dossier is in PDF format, to allow easy downloading, printing and distribution.

The Chinese revolution was one of the most important
events of the twentieth century. The victory of the revolution in 1949 was a
major defeat for imperialism. The new Communist Party government carried out
democratic measures such as land reform, and improved the conditions of workers
and peasants through the spread of health care and literacy. It began
expropriating industry, and within a few years had nationalised all capitalist
enterprises. It proclaimed that the revolution had entered the socialist stage.

A Lego recreation of Jeff Widener's 1989 photograph of "The unknown rebel".

But the new state was bureaucratically distorted from
its inception. The bureaucrats enjoyed substantial privileges. They repressed
dissent amongst workers, peasants, students and intellectuals. And they engaged
in violent power struggles amongst themselves, undermining the gains of the
revolution.

By Domingo Quilez, introduction and translation by Felipe Stuart Cournoyer

June 6, 2008 -- In February, the rift between the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS)[1] and the Movement for the Recovery of Sandinismo (MpRS or the Rescate Group)[2] began to widen and become more public. Although still in an electoral alliance, the Rescate Group (whose main leaders are Comandantes Henry Ruiz and Mónica Baltodano) has made clear its disagreement with the MRS policy of trying the embrace the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance Party (ALN) and Eduardo Montealegre in some kind of electoral alliance or ``movement against the dictatorship'' (meaning the presidency of the FSLN's Daniel Ortega). Montealegre's decision to run as Managua mayoralty candidate for Arnoldo Alemán's Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) has put the skids under any electoral MRS alliance with him and the ALN that he formerly led. The ALN is now tangoing with the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).

The MpRS is endorsing the MRS candidates in the November municipal elections, but it is apparent that differences continue to surface between these allies.

``America, this is our moment’’, stated
Barack Obama on June 3 after winning enough delegates to become the presumed presidential
nominee for the Democratic Party. Obama becomes the first African American in
the history of the country to be nominated by one of the ruling parties. It
happened on the evening of June 3 as the final two primaries occurred in Montana and South Dakota, where he and his main
opponent New York Senator Hillary Clinton won one state each.

Kola Ibrahim of the Democratic Socialist Movement of Nigeria looks at the legacy of Fidel Castro, the internationalisation of struggle and calls for ``working-class activists from Kenya to Venezuela to Georgia to Pakistan and the rest of the world'' to build a genuine working people's political platform.

Rome, June 3, 2008 -- Now that the FAO expects that hunger will affect an
extra 100 million people by the end of the year, heads of states and
leaders from around the world are gathering in Rome for the FAO
"High-Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate
Change and Bioenergy".

The international peasant’s movement Via Campesina welcomes this sudden
high level interest in food and agriculture production, but reminds
governments and international institutions that the current climate and
food crisis are not the result of any sudden natural disaster. They are
the fruit of decades of policies of trade ``liberalisation'' and of the
vertical integration of production, processing and distribution by
corporate agriculture.

Therefore, governments today have to take full responsibility for the
current crisis and take resolute actions to solve it.